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Souness: ‘Leicester are guaranteed to fall off their perch again’

Graeme Souness is not convinced by Leicester’s fairytale Champions League progression, insisting the players will “fall off their perch again”.

The Foxes secured their place in the Champions League quarter-finals with a memorable 2-0 win over Sevilla on Tuesday, this despite football dying three weeks ago.

Craig Shakespeare was crowned our early winner for the success, which saw Leicester, who have struggled for most of the season, revert to the style that saw them crowned Premier League champions last season.

The Foxes have been revitalised since the controversial sacking of popular manager Claudio Ranieri, and Souness has warned that the same players he believes betrayed the Italian will do the same again.

“They won the league playing that way,” he told TV3 Sport.

“When you’re a manager and you’ve won the league, are you going to turn up the next season and change things? If it ain’t broke why try and fix it?

“He would have been doing the same training, talking to them the same way, preparing for the games the same way, travelling to the games the same way – everything the same.

“Some of those players at the start of the season believed all of a sudden: ‘We’re big players, we’re champions’ and took their foot off the accelerator and got in their big comfy armchairs, with their Bentley in the car park and maybe changed their house. They took their foot off the accelerator.

“What does the manager do then? The manager has a go at some of them – and points it out to them.

“And then he falls out with two or three of the influential players in the dressing room and then you’ve got the followers in the dressing room – all of a sudden he’s fallen out with most of the dressing room.

“That’s what I believed happened and those players that are rejoicing out there and thinking they’re back, that they’re big players.

“They’ll fall off their perch again – guaranteed – because they’ve done it once they’ll do it again – they’ll let you down again.”